Nuclear War

The Liberator comes on a group of ships around a yacht. After chasing the boats off they board the yacht and find a man killed and woman barely alive after being raped and tortured. They also find the thirteen year old daughter hiding underwater to escape the attackers. They find out the boat was attacked by pirates from Borneo. The pirates attacked survivors on Funafuti in the Ellice Island chain. So they go there to check it out. While scouting the island Captain Donovan is captured. The pirates are from Borneo and lead by Pagon the Invincible. Pagon an educated man has plans for world domination starting in the south Pacific. His Golden Dawn is headquartered on Peleliu island. The crew of the Liberator manage a daring rescue and they nuke the pirates to end their threat.

So David Robbins is back writing and will finish off the series. I enjoy his writing and he crafts an enjoyable action tale. The sub is attacked by a flock of seagulls and it is theorized that animals as well as humans have been effected by the radiation psychosis. So we have had wolves, jaguars and sharks go nuts as well as seagulls. Interesting that Donovan seems to love using nukes to solve his problems. In the last three out of four books nukes have been employed quite casually. Hordes of psychotic white shirts in San Francisco. Nuke’em. Need to blast a hole in the Panama Canal. Nuke it. Need to wipe out crazy Bornean pirates. Nuke’em. Not complaining. I mean that is an effective way to deal with problems. I guess after a nuclear war there isn’t any need to restrain such behavior.

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The Liberator continues its search for a base in the south Pacific. Meeting up with the colony ship that set out from San Francisco they stop at Papeete in Tahiti. The city is eerily deserted with signs of radioactivity that has dissipated. So taking some supplies the group heads out to Espiritu. There they find a suitable base. Occupied by its lone inhabitant Baltimore Jack a WWF wrestler that bought the island and retired there. With a base secured they get a message from survivors in New York. So the Liberator heads out to rescue them.

The sub goes to the Panama Canal to see if its still usable. The canal was heavily bombed during the war. It is now enlarged by 1 to 5 miles in some places. Half way through they come to their first obstacle a huge crater that blocks the canal forming a long waterfall. On the north shore are hordes of white shirts. The people afflicted with radiation psychosis. On the south shore is Ciudad Romanus the lavish citadel of President for life Romanus of Panama. Here they finds the dictator under siege from drug lords from Colombia out to get his gold. Now they have to fight off these crazies and radiation crazed jaguars.

So for the third book Michael Jahn returns to the series he started. This was another enjoyable story. This would be his last book for the series. Ones after would be written by David Robbins. Not sure why he didn’t continue on but I liked his work. We now have a permanent base for the Liberator. They decide to nuke the crater and open it up then wait a while for it to calm down before heading out to New York. The gold that the dictators were fighting over was radioactive so it was worthless. They picked up some quality machine guns and a micronuke unit. A small nuclear reactor build by the French for home use. Some other interesting facts about the future. The 1996 treaty that ended the Central American War made cocaine legal. The first year funded the revamping of the American education system. The second paid for a national healthcare plan. Oh and the NFL had an expansion team in Leningrad.

So Jahn ended the story with them finally sinking the German sub Nemesis but left it open that maybe the sub escaped. His ending was a sort of open ended final with Donovan and the crew of the Liberator having many adventures that became legend.

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Captain Donovon of the Liberator the last American submarine to survive WWIII is looking for a base to establish itself. Their first stop is the Marshall Islands. After a run in with the mysterious sub Nemesis which results in a nuclear attack on a derelict Japanese fishing fleet the Liberator continues on its way. In the Marshall Islands the crew is attacked by the natives and Donovon’s brother is captured. After a fight they make peace with the natives. At a feast the volcano blows and they barely manage to escape the destruction of the island. It is soon obvious that the war has triggered volcanos all over the island chain.

This isn’t all the sub has to worry about. The Charkov the most advanced Soviet sub is stalking The Liberator. It’s captain believes the Liberator to be responsible for WWIII and wants revenge. So a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues with the other rogue sub Nemesis also lurking around.

The second book in the series was written by David Robbins the author of the popular Endworld Series. This was good choice as he always manages to write an interesting story. He would go on to write the majority of the books in the series. I was surprised at how caught up in the story I became. There was real tension in the submarine battle that kept me wanting to read more. Robbins managed to keep the characters in character from what Jahn established in the first book. Show he read the first book and was professional enough to try and maintain some sort of continuity for the series. Very often that doesn’t happen in these series with multiply authors.

He did some research on subs but there were some stuff that I didn’t buy. He has the two subs communicate by radio underwater. Now I suppose he envisioned some advanced technology in the 21st century. Still in 2019 that ability still doesn’t exist and seemed highly unlikely. Otherwise this was a good book.

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It is the early twenty-first century and in this timeline the Soviet Union still exists. It has just recently had a hardline government installed and the world leaders are meeting for a summit to deal with this government in the Sea of Japan. A mysterious sub launches a cruise missile at the fleet and thus starts World War III. The U.S.S. Liberator the newest nuclear sub in America’s fleet is unaware of the war. It is on assignment under the polar ice cap. When it surfaces it finds the world destroyed. Exploring the nearby port of Navy Harbor they find it overrun by white shirts. The survivors that suffer radiation psychosis they wear white shirts and kill anyone not effected.

The sub continues on and finds the floating wreckage of the carrier group Roosevelt floating aimlessly. Seattle is also flattened. They also have a run in with the mysterious sub that caused the war. A radio message from San Francisco tells of a group of survivors. They help this group against the hordes of white shirts and the local warlord a crazed street preacher now cult messiah named Barbarossa. They nuke the white shirts and feral wolves manage to take out Barbarossa. Then with some colonists the sub takes off to set up a base in the Society Islands.

The first in a new post-apocalyptic series. I liked the idea of a sub cruising the world looking for survivors and helping to set up civilization. The first book was written by Michael Jahn who was a journalist and mystery writer. Although he also did some science fiction. He did a good job of setting up the premise to this series. Coming at the tail end of the cold war he already adopted the trend at the time of making a reunited Germany the bad guys. Their sub is implied to have started the war. Also there was a big war in South and Central America against the drug lords. Apparently they used tactical nukes during it. Always a fascinating read to see the predictions for futures that are now the past in 2019. Actually 2019 the nuclear apocalypse should have happened by now according to old Italian movies. Glad I picked up this new series that I never got around to reading when it first came out. A great way to start the new year off.

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George Taylor has just found out that he is on Earth after coming on the Statue of Liberty. His journey to the ruins of Manhattan get him separated from his mate Nova. Here he finds a futuristic city with robots run by a hybrid ape/human child. Only this is an illusion by the mutants that control the city. They believe Taylor is a servant of the apes and are determined to find out what he knows about their plans to invade. Through flashbacks we see Taylor’s life including his finding a downed UFO during the Korean war. This lead to him getting into the secret ANSA space program using salvaged alien technology. All this against a surreal alternate history where Goldwater won the presidency and Texas has seceded.

Meanwhile in Ape City the old order is falling apart. A fundamentalist orangutan has become the head of the church and allies with General Ursus in his crusade to rid Simia of it’s humans. As the army marches into the Forbidden Zone Zira and Cornelius get involved with a chimpanzee revolution and Dr. Milo as he manages to salvage the astronauts spacecraft. Mungwort the garbage ape that was exiled gets involved with hybrid human/ape mutants in the ruins of New York controlled by the giant brains called the Inheritors. All comes to the final confrontation with the mutant’s doomsday bomb god.

So this book is the untold story between the first and second movies. Here we get Taylor’s story including his past. We get what happened to Zira and Cornelius. The events that shaped the ape society. How Dr. Milo was able to get the spaceship to work. It has been a while since I read a new book that I looked so forward to reading. This book was just awesome. Gaska is a true fan of the genre. Not only are there meticulous references to the movies but also are included are the astronauts from the TV series and animated series. There is a nod to the various comic book incarnations from both the Boom series and the old Marvel black and white magazine. I even found a reference from the old Adventure series from the nineties. The book is only $6.47 for a new 400 plus page book so this is an excellent deal. If you are a fan of the apes movies than you will love this book.

The continuation of Paul Rubenstein’s account of his early adventures with John Rourke after the Night of the War. So Paul, John and Natalia have reunited with Natalia bringing a message for John from her uncle. Unfortunately they get sidetracked after Captain Cole wounds Natalia. They find themselves on a nuclear submarine headed to the new west coast. There they are to find six ICBMs that survived the war. Only the new west coast is swarming with a crazy religious cult. Also Cole is not on a mission from U.S. II but has his own agenda. He is a white supremacist who plans to use the missiles to destroy Chicago and thus the Soviet occupation. Luckily Rourke and friends foil this mission.

Then Rourke finds his family but has a more serious problem. The Earth is doomed with the ionization of the atmosphere. Soon it will burst into flames and end all life. But General Ismael Varakov gives Rourke a way to save his family. Colonel Rozzdestvesnskiy of the KGB is building the Womb. At the former site of Norad he plans to go into suspended animation and emerge five centuries later to rule the world. He will shoot down the Eden Project a plan by the western democracies to repopulate the Earth with select people put into suspended animation and send out on a long orbit of the solar system. Rourke, Natalia and a combined Soviet Spetsnaz unit and U.S. unit manage to destroy the Womb and Rourke and his family go into suspended animation as the Earth bursts into flames.

The second volume of the Rourke Chronicles is once again a rehash of Survivalist books this time #6-9. This time they had to include some other method of telling the story since Rubenstein wasn’t involved in #8-9. So the authors resort to mostly interviews with Rourke and some salvaged records by archeologists. Mostly notes from U.S. II, Rozdestvesnskiy’s dairy and General Valkov’s notes. Some of these were interesting but for the most part nothing really new was explored in the book. Just like the last one it was mostly a rehash of the original books and didn’t have much new. I recommend to get the original books and just forego this series.

Buck Rogers has settled in to the future but still something is missing. He wants to know if any descendants of his are still alive. Against orders he secretly goes out into Anarchia to search for any records that show any of his family survived the holocaust. He finds a lead from the leader of a group of gypsies of an old wise hermit who lives in a cave by Mount Rushmore. Trading Dr. Theopolis to the gypsy leader he finds out about a repository located in the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. But when he arrives at the temple he is captured and taken to Beta Vilnius. For you see the gypsies and other people he got clues from were Draconian agents. Oh and they also manage to kidnap Wilma Deering so they now have Dr. Theopolis, Colonel Deering and Buck.

Kane and a professor Von Norbert want Buck because of a unique antibody that existed in twentieth century humans that no longer exists. They want Buck to impregnate thousands of women so he can pass on this unique antibody. Then the children will be growth accelerated into full grown soldiers. Thus they can have soldiers to win their war with the Gregorians whose system has a disease that is killing off their soldiers. But of course Princess Ardala want Buck all to himself. Then there is Wilma who is madly in love with him. This guy has is tough in the future. He still manages to escape, rescue his friends and defeat the evil Draconian plot.

So they decided to put out a second book based on the TV series. This one was an unused script written by Bob Shane and put out before the series hit the airwaves. Boy is it pure seventies with its CB slang talking gypsies. I suppose they decided to drop this script because of all the blatant sexual overtones in a prime time TV series of the seventies. Actually it could be too that it is bad. I mean really bad. The weird convoluted plot for Buck to be obsessed with finding his relatives. Didn’t know the Mormon church was keeping genetic records on everyone. Then of course there are the young women that the Draconians want Buck to impregnate. They are five year olds that have been accelerated to adulthood. That is just creepy.

The book was written before the series came out so it doesn’t feel like the show. He describes Dr. Huer as a bald headed man with glasses which they cast someone like that. I did find the parts happening in the post-wastelands of Anarchia interesting. That was something I found interesting in the pilot that they never bothered to explore further in the series. So from a historical standpoint it is interesting to see what kind of scripts they rejected. Otherwise not much to recommend this book.